The Nimble PM

How many of you have given this advice to a new PM?  I know I have.  I remember vividly explaining to a fellow consultant the mistakes she made in failing to determine exactly what the client wanted when she started the project and then offering a few techniques that I felt would help her in [...]

woke up this morning thinking about the fact that when I talk to CIOs many (if not most) tell me they know they don’t have the best project managers currently on staff.  My own experience would absolutely confirm this as true so the question is why don’t we fix it? Part of the answer seems [...]

There’s something seductively attractive about the concept of a strange attractor, that force that causes a random, unpredictable system to stay within observable boundaries without becoming either nonrandom or predictable.  Margret Wheatley, in her book Leadership and the New Science, talks about the fact that strange attractors reveal the order that is inherent in certain [...]

“IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder, independent of the organizational chart.” Found this quote in a computerworld article a friend sent me (http://tinyurl.com/lm9yb7).  While the entire article is well worth reading this one sentence seemed to pertain to [...]

I was just reviewing a presentation for a client and the light bulb just went on.  The presentation discussed the common problem with having too many projects that don’t actually further the strategy and the presentation seemed to imply that this was a process compliance issue.  I can understand their perspective.  Layout the steps and [...]

Woke up a couple of weeks ago with the answer to something I’ve wondered about for years. Most management books tend to insist that anyone can be a leader and yet on a day to day basis most of us see dozens of situations where those who should be leading aren’t.  The answer to this [...]

Two weeks ago, between returning from a trip to Orlando for the PPM Summit and heading out again to Portland to speak at the Blues PMO summit, I decided to take a few minutes and catch up on my email.  As it always does with me — one click lead to another and before I [...]

Anyone who knows me knows that I can argue both sides of a topic with equal fluidity.  This is a skill I picked up from my father who was legendary for asserting a position and then explaining (to anyone who would listen) all the reasons why his deeply held belief might, in fact, not be [...]

A post by Wally Bock on his Three Star Leadership Blog got me thinking about our the working environment we create based on how we manage our PMOs, our programs, and our projects.   Over the years Mr. Bock’s has compiled a list of what people who have attended his class consider the hallmarks of [...]